The focus of this study was to learn more about a critical commodity market participant, the long term speculator. The speculator's activity broadens a market, creates essential liquidity, and performs an irreplaceable pricing function. Working knowledge of the profiles, motivations, and modes...

The main purpose of this dissertation was to evaluate how liberalization of agricultural markets, as emerged from the Uruguay round of negotiations, alter existing trade patterns. The study provides welfare estimations of full and partial trade liberalization in selected agricultural processed...

In this dissertation, a state-contingent, principal-agent model is developed to examine the institution of input provision by a corporate firm that contracts with agents for the production of a given commodity. "Input provision" entails not only the provision and delivery of key inputs by the...

Through the remarkable growth of over a decade China's rural industry has already become an important pillar of its national economy. The primary goal of this dissertation is to place China's rural industry in a historical and a market economic perspective in an efforts to link its rapid...